I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — Forrest Ackerman was a notorious weirdo, an obsessive collector, and a major character in science-fiction fandom, so he was kind of a real world Comic Book Guy.
And now it is revealed that he was one of those men.

I guess this is the time to remind the boys here of #MeToo. I and other young women like me were subjected to a different kind of “Forry worship.” How differently would any of you have felt, when all you wanted was to talk about monsters with the “over eager editor” of your favorite monster magazine, if your Uncle Forry had forced wet kisses on you? If he had put his hands all over you, pinching your “naughty bottom” and squeezing your “boobies”? If he had enthusiastically related with a big grin how he wanted to strip off your clothes with everybody watching? And if, in the face of your total refusal of any of his attentions every single time you saw him in person, he never didn’t try again, and again, and again? And if for years, in between those times, he mailed you letters with pornographic photos, and original stories about how naughty you were, and how he wanted to hurt and abuse you, yet all the while make you weep and beg for more? And if he continued that behavior, despite written and verbal demands to cease, entirely unabashed for more than two decades? No, I can’t forget him either — or how he turned my childhood love of monsters into something adult and truly monstrous.

But he was also a promoter and collaborator with famous SF authors, like Marion Zimmer Bradley…oh, crap. Never mind. Someone please put the cover back on the open sewer.

I like Pink. I’ve got several of her albums on my phone, and I think her latest song is lovely.

But then I watched the video and realized that she is a mammal: a filthy, stinking, sweaty, hairy mammal. Pink has nipples. I am so disillusioned. Until I saw that video, I hoped that maybe she was some kind of mollusc, or possibly an arachnid…I’d even have settled for an annelid.

But no. Mammal she is, with mammae, no tentacles or siphon in sight, no spinnerets, not even any chaetae. I am not the only one shattered by this revelation: lots of people are upset that Pink has flashed the world with the news that she is not only a vertebrate, but is also a member of the class Mammalia.

At least some people have been vigorous in their denunciations.

Nipples and breasts are a normal part of human anatomy. Not just women’s anatomy, either. Men have nipples too. Shocker, I know. But you never see this kind of thing when men are topless, much less when you can, god forbid, see their nipples through their shirt. Societal shaming of women’s breasts and nipples is ridiculous, outdated, and frankly, it’s a steaming pile of horseshit that needs to stop.

So let’s just go ahead and clear this up for the people who haven’t turned the calendar page yet: Stop trying to police women’s bodies and their clothes based on your own views of modesty and propriety. Seriously. STOP.

As Lauren Duca so eloquently put it for Teen Vogue, “The thing about nipples is literally everyone has them, but we choose to sexualize only women’s nipples. There isn’t something inherently sexual about female nipples as compared to male nipples. Anatomically speaking, female nipples are for feeding babies. And yet, because we apply this absurd stigma to female nipples, as if we’ve all agreed to pretend the mere sight of female nipples will lead us astray.”

Wait, what? They’re not outraged that a mammal has been allowed to flagrantly sing in public at all…but some people are upset to discover that mammals have mammary glands? That makes no sense at all. It’s right there in the name, people! Jeez. Are you also going to get pissy when you find out teleosts have bones, or that arthropods have jointed limbs?

Christian Ott, the astronomer with a history of sexual harassment and who left Caltech, has a new job: he’s an astronomer with no teaching duties in Finland. Good for him, maybe. There’s always the question of what to do with the ‘naughty boys’, AKA abusive assholes, once they’ve been caught. Throw them in jail? They’ve ruined women’s careers, but unfortunately that often isn’t a prosecutable crime. Ban them from academia forever? We don’t actually have a mechanism to do that. I’m not going to declare that Ott ought to be fired from every position he lands, but it is going to be a growing problem.

Janet Stemwedel has some recommendations for what any abuser can do to regain trust.

1. Own what you did.
2. Accept the descriptions of the harm you did given by those you harmed.
3. Have your defenders stand down.
4. Avoid the limelight.
5. Don’t demand anyone’s trust.
6. Shift your focus to work that supports your scientific community, not your individual advancement.

I think that’s a good set of things for the individual to do, and it looks like that’s a hard set of hurdles to cross — I note that a lot of abusers can’t clear step 1. But I’m curious about what institutions should do, since there’s a reasonable concern that they will repeat their behavior. Yet sometimes these guys have a tempting skill set and a history of success within their field of research, so it would be a waste to demand that a highly trained scientist resign themselves to the job of gas station attendant for the rest of their lives. So what are universities to do?

I have some suggestions.

1. Make employment provisional. Don’t hand them tenure, but temporary appointments subject to review are a good starting point. That’s what the University of Turku has done: Ott has a two-year appointment.

2. Isolate the person from students and post-docs. Again, that’s what Turku has done — he has been appointed “a senior researcher without any teaching or supervising responsibilities”.

3. Monitor the heck out of the guy. I don’t know how Turku is handling this, but at my university we have yearly reviews of teaching, science, and service. They should have an explicit fourth category for people like Ott, a review of interactions with colleagues and students. That means someone should be talking with other personnel every year to catch potentially harassing behavior before it becomes an issue, and any concerns should be openly discussed with him and his colleagues.

4. Apply the Stemwedel suggestions to him. If he’s denying his actions, don’t hire him in the first place. If he turns into a blustering, grandstanding prima donna who demands attention and distracts his colleagues, fire him, no matter how good his research.

I’d add a fifth, but it’s awfully hard to police. Every large department already has its own enablers and jerks, and one way harassers can thrive is by constructing their own local community of like-minded obnoxious twits who sympathize with them. Watch who the new hire is associating with — if they’re building their very own clique of good ol’ boys, they can be difficult to deal with later.

Basically, let him work, but don’t forget his past.